Medical District worries

Last week’s first of three public
planning meetings on the comprehensive plan for the Springfield
Medical District drew a big crowd and a healthy discussion. The
professionals from RTKL Associates Inc., which has offices in
Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, and other major cities, gave a nice
presentation with interesting facts that they have accumulated so
far.

For example, half of the land in the
mile-square district on the near north side of Springfield is
devoted to the automobile, primarily in streets and parking lots.
The implication is that the plan, to be delivered later this year,
will propose less land area devoted to cars, particularly surface
parking lots. The planners pointed out that while 4,000 people live
in the area, some 12,000 people work there, and not many who work
there live there. The implication is that it would be nice if more
of the people who work at St. John’s, Memorial, and SIU lived
nearby. The planners pointed out that the Medical District is
bisected to its detriment by the Third Street railroad tracks, so
I’m guessing they will join those advocating relocating the rail corridor to 11th Street. And they
pointed out that while north/south street access is good, there
aren’t many through east-west streets, thereby putting an extra
traffic burden on North Grand Avenue, Carpenter Street, and Madison
Street. Hmm — I wonder where they’re going to propose a new
east-west street or two?

It sure is nice to get some extra attention
to these old neighborhoods around the hospitals, where some of us
have been laboring for years with little noticeable support from
the medical community. When planners from Chicago and Dallas say
this area ought to become an “extension of downtown and the
new presidential library” it makes our hearts flutter. When
they speak of “linkages” between the medical facilities
and the neighborhoods, we get excited, even without knowing exactly
what linkages are. They ask if it wouldn’t be a good idea to
have more restaurants in the area, and we say, sure, let’s
have more restaurants.

It was only after the large meeting broke
into discussion groups that I picked up some worrisome hints. It
started when the Chicago-based planner who led the session
didn’t know the name of McClernand School, calling it
“McClellan,” the wrong Civil War general. It made me
wonder how much time he’d actually spent here. He said he’d talked to some of the teachers, who
told him the school has a big turnover of students during the school
year, making it difficult to teach them. The planner said some of this
problem will go away once the area begins to stabilize and
“re-gentrify.” I wasn’t sure whether he meant the
problem would go away or that the low-income students would go away.

It may not be significant, but after the
planner asked the audience for its goals for the neighborhood, a
friend said it should be a goal to preserve and enhance racial and
ethnic diversity. After he dutifully wrote it to go up on the wall,
the planner placed diversity under the heading of
“concepts” rather than “goals.” When
participants said the “perception of crime” is a
problem for the area, I suggested that planning should be done
based on facts, not just perceptions. The distinction seemed lost
on the planner. A woman said the presence of a homeless shelter in
the neighborhood adds to the perception of crime; the planner
didn’t bother to say that homelessness and crime are two
separate things. Yet when a North End resident said attention
should be given to preserving historic buildings, the planner was
quick to say — ominously I thought — that not all old
buildings are historic.

Nobody wants crime. Not all old buildings

need to be preserved. The high
“mobility” rate at McClernand and other low-income schools
is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. And though
“re-gentrification” is a scary way to put it, attracting
more homeowners to the Medical District neighborhoods would be a plus.
The planners cleverly got the public involved by asking us to place
green sticky dots on pictures we liked of other cities, and red sticky
dots on ugly pictures. But unless the process goes beyond sticky dots
to sticky issues, a great opportunity will have been wasted. Unless the
discussion can dig into the serious issues of race, class, poverty, and
diversity, all we’ll get is a plan for moving low-income
residents out.

There is still time in the planning process
to change the concept from a medical district to a
“health” district, where there are healthy
relationships between blacks and whites, rich and poor. Planners
might encourage the hospitals and medical community to broaden
their mission into shaping a healthy neighborhood, and a better
life for their current neighbors.

Fletcher Farrar is a resident of the area designated as the Medical District.